Roger Bootle: British exit is not 'most likely outcome'

Economist Roger Bootle discusses whether the UK might leave the EU and if it did, what would happen.

Following the Conservatives' win in the UK elections, Britain is now preparing itself for a referendum on the UK's European Union membership in 2017. A British exit from the EU is now a real possibility.

What would happen in a referendum is hard to predict, but the next two years spell uncertainty. Businesses will be operating and trading with Europe, without knowing whether they will still be part of that Union in the near future.

Prime Minister Cameron wants to start renegotiating some of the terms of the UK's membership on issues like migration within the EU, stopping the payment of benefits to new migrants, and the repatriation of some laws, from Brussels back to the UK parliament in Westminster. The economic consequences of a Brexit could be significant.

We speak to Roger Bootle, an economist, Daily Telegraph columnist and author of The Trouble with Europe about a Brexit and what this could mean for the UK and the EU. Bootle tells us why he does not think an exit is the most likely outcome, and why even if the UK leaves, trade with the bloc would continue.